A Slightly Less Unknown Ideal

The newest (March 2011) issue of The American Conservative features an article by Sheldon Richman titled Libertarian Left: Free-Market Anti-Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal. It discusses, inter alia, the Center for a Stateless Society, the Alliance of the Libertarian Left, Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Roy Childs, Karl Hess, Thomas Hodgskin, Benjamin Tucker, Gabriel Kolko, Kevin Carson, Gary Chartier, William Gillis, and your humble correspondent. Its a great piece to use to introduce left-libertarian ideas to the neophyte. (Its currently available online only to subscribers, alas.)

The American Conservative is definitely not The National Review or The Weekly Standard. It’s consistently friendly to antiwar sentiments, to libertarian ideas, to people like Bill Kauffman, even to something called “left-conservatism.” So finding this piece there really isn’t as much of a shock as you might think.

The American Conservative is a unique market, but generally, it seems to me that left libertarians are wasting their time by trying to dialogue with right libertarians and conservatives. I am curious as to whether you have made any efforts or had any success in reaching out to the general anarchist community? I think left libertarians have a great deal to offer the movement in terms of intellectual rigor and general philosophical outlook.

As for why the essay appears in The American Conservative, well, the editor has read Nock and Rothbard (as well as some Kevin Carson and Roderick Long). Since Sheldon wrote what I consider to be the definitive essay on the Old Right for the Independent Review a few years back, he seemed like a good choice to convey to our readers who the libertarian left really are.

We’ll have more from Sheldon in the future — and Kevin, Gary, and Roderick shouldn’t be surprised if I approach them about writing some day as well.